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Grey Hunter posted:This, I now have a 16 Strong Skype channel from which I game twice a week. All goons and all great people. Find a goon group - find some other random fools who can meet up once a week at a set time and game. Of course time zones might be a bit of a bitch though. Being an EU player in an almost all US group can lead to "Oh wait, why is it suddenly daylight outside?" situations.
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Jun 3, 2015 14:25
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Welp, first off this was far enough back, I believe it was pre Goon. Also, if he didn't DM, it was pretty much me DMing all the time. I don't mind DMing, but a steady diet of it gets pretty old.
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Jun 3, 2015 17:07
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I've been looking for a story, I think it was in this thread, that involved someone playing Flames of War with the Canadian army against Rommel in an armored car and calling for his head on a maplewood pike. I've searched with the search function, and it's not coming up, and it was a great story.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:35
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It's easy when everyone agrees that one person in the group is a complete arsehead, or you're the only beacon of sanity amongst a wave of cat-piss. The problems come in when you have a group of five, and One and Two don't really like Three, but Four and Five are fine with them, but Four doesn't get on with Two for not liking Three, and no one is entirely sure how Three feels about anything because they swing between being helpful and rude and everyone's worried that the fun that they're having with the four other people will just be demolished if they mention their problem with the fifth person.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:44
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Skyscraper posted:I've been looking for a story, I think it was in this thread, that involved someone playing Flames of War with the Canadian army against Rommel in an armored car and calling for his head on a maplewood pike. I've searched with the search function, and it's not coming up, and it was a great story. They're in the murphy's rules thread.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:53
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Skyscraper posted:I've been looking for a story, I think it was in this thread, that involved someone playing Flames of War with the Canadian army against Rommel in an armored car and calling for his head on a maplewood pike. I've searched with the search function, and it's not coming up, and it was a great story. It was indeed, I remembered it as well from when I read through the thread, and found it: Here you go. Same guy also posted a few stories in the Murphy thread, but I haven't read them. If you're a fan of the game, YF19pilot posted a number of times about his experiences playing FoW at his friendly local gamestore, since it came up in the search as well.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:56
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Coward posted:It's easy when everyone agrees that one person in the group is a complete arsehead, or you're the only beacon of sanity amongst a wave of cat-piss. The problems come in when you have a group of five, and One and Two don't really like Three, but Four and Five are fine with them, but Four doesn't get on with Two for not liking Three, and no one is entirely sure how Three feels about anything because they swing between being helpful and rude and everyone's worried that the fun that they're having with the four other people will just be demolished if they mention their problem with the fifth person. Then Three's boyfriend starts creeping everyone out, Five and Four's start discussing BDSM at the table, Two and hers are all nauseatingly cutesy PDA, then Zero kicks in the door and slices the table in half- Wait, what game are we talking about? Kavak fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 06:03
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Ambi posted:It was indeed, I remembered it as well from when I read through the thread, and found it: Here you go. Same guy also posted a few stories in the Murphy thread, but I haven't read them. Thanks! I don't know why that isn't coming up in the search. I was telling a friend how great FoW is, and I wanted to cite this as evidence.
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Jun 4, 2015 06:42
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The conversation about playing online with goons has me thinking about my current 7th Sea game that I posted about once a little while back. The GM just moved away. He's not too far away, but no close enough that's he'll be able to run the game often. He wants to make a point to come up about once per month to run the game, but we're all worried that the time and distance will eat away at that commitment. I know if I were far away, time and money would start to wear away at my willingness to travel that regularly. This GM is one of the best I've played with and he's one of my closest friends, so it would be a bummer to lose that regular game. I know people ITT have had luck gaming online, but has anyone ever Skyped in one player to a table with a live group? I'm thinking something like just putting him over Skype and just putting the laptop on the table. It sounds like it would work, but I just wonder how the players at the physical table might interact differently to a remote player or GM. I guess this is more of a question about player psychology, but I'm just thinking aloud here. Speaking of which, we had a beast of a cliffhanger the other day in that game, and is all the more reason I want it to continue. The cast:  Katherine: Avalonian (English) glamour sorceress. She is from a line of sailors from a minor noble family. Her dad lost his sons to the sea, so he set her up in an arranged marriage to get her out of sailing. She ditched the guy on the altar to make a legend for herself at sea. Also, she recently rejoined the Knights of the Rose and Cross after having been disgraced for a few years (see above). She is the ship's captain, party face, and incurable bullshit artist. (This is me). Alana: Inish (Irish) prizefighter. Trained under the setting's first modern boxer, but up to her eyeballs in debt to a crooked Inish noble. She also has the (Wo)Man of Will advantage, which makes her immune to things like crippling and fear, and resistant to magic by sheer grit. She is the ship's Master of the Tops, tank, and drunken beat-stick. ("J" from the D&D stories, my wife, plays Alana). Vignar: Vesten (Norwegian) warrior. He is less of a sailor and more of a warrior, so he is the ship's Sergent-at-Arms and captain of the ship's boarding marines. He is a berserker when need be, but otherwise he is a sword-and-board defensive fighter. He insists on protecting Katherine because she saved him (in the middle of the campaign, when his player joined) from slavers at sea. Katherine has been trying to find a way to free him of this obligation since, to no avail. (The DM from the D&D stories plays Vignar). Sebastien: Castillian (Spanish) doctor. He was a career priest and being groomed to be an Inquisitor when his latent fire magic manifested. So, he has a bit of a crisis of faith, but he is the ship's moral compass and is also a gifted physician and inventor. He has managed to keep his fire magic secret from everyone but Katherine, who has promised to keep his secret in order to keep his mutual trust and respect. (This player does not appear in the D&D stories). Peter: Montaigne (French) sailor. He actually sucks at being a sailor and is on the ship to do the ship's dirty work. He is a knife fighter and (unbeknownst to the rest of the crew) a spy for a secret society of knights fighting a shadow war against ancient aliens. Yeop. No one else asks too many questions, and things get done. Or stabbed. Whatever needs doing. Basically, the party's rogue, and, oddly, Katherine's other moral compass besides Sebastien. (This player is also new to the stories). James: Avalonian (English) sailor. sought a life at sea and traiing as an officer to get revenge for his dead family. We recently found and killed the subject of his revenge, and in the process he poisoned himself and Vignar. He was Katherine's second mate, but she busted him down to "whatever is lower than cabin boy," and he is now under Peter's tutelage and command. He also has a roguish streak, but his skills are broader than Peter's and he is more of a conventional fencer in combat. (This player is also new to the stories).This all happens right after James kills The Valkyrie, the subject of his revenge. We regroup, revive James (if only to pump him for information), and he tells us what poison Vignar is dosed with. He also says that he thinks he dosed himself with it while he was preparing it on his blade. Mechanically, the poison deals one incurable "Dramatic Wound" per week, unless a save is made. Even if a save is made, these checks continue because the duration is endless. A character can suffer a number of Dramatic Wounds equal to twice their Resolve Trait before they are "Knocked Out," and one more kills them. Normally, Dramatic Wounds can be cured by surgery or time, but wounds caused by poison don't heal until the poison runs its course. But this poison's course is endless. This is one of the most lethal poisons in the game, and a couple of doses cost James his entire life savings as a young naval officer. To make a long story short: we have a ticking clock on James and Vignar, and it's about 6-10 weeks long. So Sebastien, our doctor, sets about trying to concoct a remedy for a poison not known to have a remedy. Meanwhile, the ship goes about its business, because whether or not we're about to lose two officers, the rest of the crew needs to be paid. Vignar asks Katherine for one last request, assuming he is going to die in a couple of months. He says he has half of a treasure map, and a hated cousin of his has the other half. He thinks it's some kind of sacred Vesten site of an expedition from hundreds of years ago (think Vineland and/or Lief Ericsson's voyage). His cousin apparently thinks it's a huge gently caress off pile of gold. Katherine is apprehensive until he tells her that this cousin is also the person responsible for getting him caught by slavers in the first place. Now she's in on the plan, if only to ruin this rear end in a top hat cousin of his. Katherine and Alana go find this cousin of Vignar, who manages a branch of a Vendel (Danish) trade consortium. Think of the most ruthless, amoral colonial merchant you can imagine. That's this woman. Katherine plays nice with her and arranges to transport some of their goods as a pretense for being in the office. All she has to do is confirm that she's there, because Vignar claims the map is valuable enough that she'll have it with her like he does with his half. Back at the ship, the party cooks up the patented Hare-Brained PC SchemeTM to break into the office and steal the cousin's half of the map. We go to the office at night. Peter and James are supposed to sneak in while the rest of us cause a diversion outside. Both sides of the plan go tits-up faster than I've ever seen a Hare-Brained SchemeTM do so. Both parties botched their respective rolls about as badly as possible, simultaneously. A bunch of goons come out of the woodwork to give us poo poo outside, and the rogues get caught on the inside. We could have beaten all of the goons, but then the cousin would have suspected something and hidden away the map. In a pinch, Katherine and Vignar decide to try a different tactic. We call out the cousin, who comes outside with our party's rogues and a few of her own goons. No one is detained or knocked out yet, but both sides are looking for a reason to start fighting. The cousin sees Vignar with Katherine and puts everything together. Katherine sees that she has figured out the connection between the ship captain she just met and her hated relative. Katherine appeals to what she guesses is the cousin's hubris, based on how Vignar described her and how smug she was acting earlier. "Alright, alright. Crew, hold your weapons."*They do so, as do the cousin's goons.*  "What do you people want?" "Your map, of course. Let's end all this nonsense now that you know why we're really here." "You can't have it, unless I can have his half." "Sure. We can exchange halves now, make copies, and we can each leave in search of the treasure at our own time. We can make it... a race." "That's a bold challenge. I have a whole merchant fleet at my disposal." *Spends a Drama Die to activate the villain's Hubris* "Yes, well, we are just one small merchant vessel, and with virtually no cannon with which to defend ourselves. But I have my pride, and I would assume you do as well and wouldn't send your cronies after the treasure. A worthy woman of the seas would seek the treasure herself, of course."In 7th Sea, every major character (i.e. Heroes and Villains, not nameless brutes or henchmen pawns) has a hubris. GMs can spend Drama Dice to activate PC hubrises. But players can do the same to activate villain hubrises. The problem for players is, unless you have some kind of rare mechanic to actually know a villain's hubris, you have to guess what it is based on how they act. Up to that point, the cousin was acting really proud, to a fault, so I have Katherine play into that. It works. The cousin buys it, and her crew believes Katherine's outright lie to boot: that our ship was virtually unarmed. We sail on a small ship that is tougher than most ships its size and has hidden gun ports. The crew's plan is not to chase the cousin to the treasure at all, but to ambush her as soon as we can safely do so. And, if push came to shove, our ship is faster and could win a race as a plan B. Playing into her pride makes her leave to find the treasure with just her ship, instead of a bunch of ships that would have been impossible for us to deal with. We beat them out to sea and set an ambush elsewhere in the archipelago. We spring the trap, catch them off guard, and deal them some severe damage before turning tail and running for the goal. We don't want to risk a long, pitched battle with them because the cousin's ship is packed full of Eisen (German) mercenaries. We just want to slow their ship. We end up beating them to the treasure island by most of a day as a result. We can see the map's ultimate destination from the shore: a mountaintop with "horns" protruding from the peak. The natives at first greet us and offer us some special drink. All of us but Alana and Vignar fail a mystery check to resist some kind of effect. When Alana asks for seconds and thirds, the natives are aghast in some combination of awe and fear and annoyance. That tips off the rest of us that something is deliberately wrong with the drinks. We all immediately start refusing (and some induce vomiting), and then the effects become clear: they are sedatives. At this, Katherine finds a way to use the misfortune to her favor and says to the interpreter just as the cousin's ship crests the horizon: "If you harm us, the people that will come after us will destroy your entire island. We are emissaries. They are evil incarnate."She points at the horizon. The natives buy it, because Katherine is a master of bullshit and I rolled like a champ to intimidate them. While the natives are momentarilly distracted by the sight of another, larger ship incoming, we book it. Well, we try to. Those who can still walk help those who can't, and we flee through the jungle toward the mountain. The natives pursued and we fought some off. Between the adrenaline and the vomiting, most of us shake the sedative effect by this time. We continue to flee because the natives had started to set ambushes and booby-trap the jungle. Bad news for us, but worse news for the cousin's crew, who are probably running into it right about now. When we get to the mountain, there is a wide staircase carved into the rock that goes all the way to the top. At the top stands an eight foot tall Vesten, who has apparently been there for hundreds of years through unnaturally long life and black magic. His long beard was festooned with human bones, and human skulls hanged from his armor. He wears a necklace made of human ears. I am beginning to think the natives aren't cannibals at all, and just drug travelers to feed to this guy. The giant issues a challenge to the group for ritual combat to the death, and Katherine turns to Vignar. This is his "treasure," after all. "Let me have this, captain. To the last, I will die a Vesten." "Alright." *Turns to the rest of the crew, draws her sword* "Don't let anyone onto the peak until we're all dead on the side of this mountain." *Quietly* "Alana, I don't really want to die here, so if I give the word, you go up there and kill that bloodthirsty bastard. Got that?" "Oh, man. I am not drunk enough for this. Hold on." *finishes off hip flask, throws it off the mountain* "BUUUUURP. Yep. Let's do this thing."We left off last game with angry natives and/or the cousin's crew charging up the mountain to face us, and with a one-on-one viking death match at our backs. Worse yet, Vignar is carrying one Dramatic Wound from the poison. Even worse, he ages a week for every round he spends in a berserker state, which will trigger that once per week check on the poison every round. Katherine is loyal to what he wants to do up there, but she also doesn't want to just let an officer die in vain. I will totally send a drunken boxer up there to finish off the psycho viking.
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Jun 5, 2015 14:57
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Railing Kill posted:The GM just moved away. He's not too far away, but no close enough that's he'll be able to run the game often. He wants to make a point to come up about once per month to run the game, but we're all worried that the time and distance will eat away at that commitment. I know if I were far away, time and money would start to wear away at my willingness to travel that regularly. 
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Jun 5, 2015 15:00
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Why not gather and facetime them in?
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Jun 5, 2015 22:10
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Railing Kill posted:Vignar is carrying one Dramatic Wound from the poison. Even worse, he ages a week for every round he spends in a berserker state, which will trigger that once per week check on the poison every round. Oh my god, this is the most metal loving thing ever.
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Jun 5, 2015 22:40
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Golden Bee posted:Why not gather and facetime them in? That's kind of what I'm suggesting just using Google Hangouts or Skype instead. Enough of us have tablets and laptops that it wouldn't be hard to do. My /only concern would be how realistic and effective it would be. My Lovely Horse posted:If it helps, I'm the GM in a situation just like this, and I've been keeping up for almost four years now. That is definitely good to know. We're going to try it out in a couple of weeks once he gets settled into his new place. Captain Bravo posted:Oh my god, this is the most metal loving thing ever. Oh, and I forgot to mention one more mechanical thing that makes the whole situation metal as gently caress: the evil Vesten has a Fear Rating of 4. In 7th Sea, that means that everyone trying to fight him has to roll their Resolve with a target number dependent on the Fear Rating. If they fail, they lose a number of dice equal to the fear rating to all attacks and defenses against him. FR 4 is high. FR only goes from 1 to 5. Vignar has decent Resolve and barely passed his check.... for now. When the evil Vesten enters his own berserker state, as I'm sure he will soon into the combat, he'll increase his FR and automatically provoke a new check. If Vignar fails that as he is likely to do, the only way he'll have out of the FR penalty is to enter his own berserker state (which renders him immune to fear). But that's even more reason Alana is our ace in the hole: She has (Wo)Man of Will. She is immune to fear all the time. 
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Jun 6, 2015 01:34
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We used to have a guy Skype in. I think it would have worked better if there were better mics involved, and maybe webcams to keep visual focus. It worked fairly well though. Too bad this guy cheated on virtually every roll he made.
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Jun 6, 2015 01:43
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Bieeardo posted:We used to have a guy Skype in. I think it would have worked better if there were better mics involved, and maybe webcams to keep visual focus. It worked fairly well though. Too bad this guy cheated on virtually every roll he made. I'm not too concerned with this guy cheating. He's running the game and uses a screen when he's at the table anyway, but I can tell that even the few times he does fudge things, it's in the PCs' favor for the sake of drama. It's just too bad he's not running Paranoia. It would be funny to be talking to Friend Computer on a literal computer the whole time.
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Jun 6, 2015 01:52
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I think for Paranoia you're probably supposed to do something like DM via computer but secretly be in the next room, and reveal at the climax that the computer was another player or something.
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Jun 6, 2015 02:03
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Bieeardo posted:We used to have a guy Skype in. I think it would have worked better if there were better mics involved, and maybe webcams to keep visual focus. It worked fairly well though. Too bad this guy cheated on virtually every roll he made. I skyped into a game once and it was just about the weirdest thing ever, made me feel like I was in Old World Blues. It was a poor substitute for being there too, helped me realize the main draw is the social event, not the game itself.
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Jun 6, 2015 02:19
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Railing Kill posted:I'm not too concerned with this guy cheating. He's running the game and uses a screen when he's at the table anyway, but I can tell that even the few times he does fudge things, it's in the PCs' favor for the sake of drama. Funny story, I give my players their mission briefings directly from friend computer using Google Translate. One day, Francis-XFO-Y3 addresses Turtlicious to ask a question instead of passing a note. The two other trouble shooters detected communism and summarily executed him. Now players will only talk to my laptop, and will not address me in anyway while I run a game.
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Jun 6, 2015 02:34
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I skyped into a game once and it was just about the weirdest thing ever, made me feel like I was in Old World Blues. It was a poor substitute for being there too, helped me realize the main draw is the social event, not the game itself. I've only ever played online games, and I still feel like they're social events. Not as social as shooting the poo poo with friends, beer and pizza would be, but still an occasion to just hang out and crack dumb jokes.
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Jun 6, 2015 18:22
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M.Ciaster posted:I've only ever played online games, and I still feel like they're social events. Not as social as shooting the poo poo with friends, beer and pizza would be, but still an occasion to just hang out and crack dumb jokes. Most of my RPG gaming comes from online games as well and shooting the poo poo over VOIP before and during the game feels perfectly normal for me. I guess it also helps to have decent audio quality which is something Skype can be iffy about occasionally.
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Jun 7, 2015 10:56
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I should make sure to clarify that no one else was skyping.
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Jun 7, 2015 10:58
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If one of my gaming group is ill or has an early day at work the next day we sometimes skype them in, but it's never quite as good as having them in person even with cameras running. (I have things set up so that they appear on my TV rather than computer monitor)
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Jun 7, 2015 14:26
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It's just not quite the same if everyone can throw things at each other except you.
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Jun 7, 2015 14:31
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goatface posted:It's just not quite the same if everyone can throw things at each other except you. Throwing things at people is an essential part of the Tabletop Gaming Experience.
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Jun 8, 2015 00:22
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karmicknight posted:Throwing things at people is an essential part of the Tabletop Gaming Experience.
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Jun 8, 2015 05:33
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N00ba the Hutt posted:I have one or two lovely memories of winging d4s across the table at people who made particularly awful puns. My favorite bit is how often they threw them back. Thanks for returning my ammunition! d4s are better spread upon the ground as caltrops after someone chases after you for throwing d8s at them, which are also quite pointy and clearly more aerodynamic. 
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Jun 8, 2015 16:58
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Empty water bottles are the projectile of the modern gaming table, their depleted H2O cores allow for them to be easy to see, use and clean up, and indicate that the players are hydrating during long game sessions.
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Jun 8, 2015 17:08
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In a setting where magic and enchantment are based on dreams and embodied ideas and memories, I had a player enchant his .357 revolver with the idea of the Video Game Magnum, turning it into an armor piercing one-handed sniper rifle.
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Jun 8, 2015 17:14
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Throwing things at each other is why my tabletop group picked up a set of huge, foam dice.
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Jun 8, 2015 17:42
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A friend of mine bought one of those big brushed steel d20's and he brought it to every game session but was forbidden to roll it because the first time he did it left a two-foot scattering of gouges in a hand-stained table and shattered a drinking glass.
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Jun 8, 2015 20:40
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ellbent posted:A friend of mine bought one of those big brushed steel d20's and he brought it to every game session but was forbidden to roll it because the first time he did it left a two-foot scattering of gouges in a hand-stained table and shattered a drinking glass. But it makes such a glorious sound when it rolls! Discourages throwing, too.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:33
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BurntCornMuffin posted:Discourages throwing, too. No it doesn't.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:45
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ellbent posted:A friend of mine bought one of those big brushed steel d20's and he brought it to every game session but was forbidden to roll it because the first time he did it left a two-foot scattering of gouges in a hand-stained table and shattered a drinking glass. You could always do what they did in Darths & Droids and make a die that heat-welds itself to the table after you roll it. You only break it out for the really important rolls.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:53
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There's a regular player in my group who, for some very complex reasons, is more or less a permanent fixture despite his questionable nature. On a good night/session, he plays pretty well, laughs with the group, rolls with it. On worse nights, he's a pain in everyone's rear end. Luckily, my suffering translates well into terrible catpiss stories for you! JOY! I've spoken previously about him & his edgy characters in Shadowrun. For a refresher: Gangly white metalhead conservative christian brony (generally accepted to be deep in the closet) creates the most generic edgelord characters you can imagine. Soak in that sentence for a minute. His previous characters include "Grinder", a seven foot man who was essentially General Grevious in a "Battlekilt" who spends most scenes sulking if he's not mutilating corpses; and "Rein", a half-shark boy who is essentially Raiden from MGS, but with more accidental homosexual overtones. His characters frequently feel designed from the mindset of "I have to be the most special character here." They're Steel-&-Blood-Magic murder machines like some sort of Grimdark EVA Unit, or Bishonen shark-boy Living Weapons. Personal favorites for "Special Snowflake award winners" are: Nexus, an Australian Mercenary with a blood red mohawk in a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Homebrew where all the other PCs were normal Ukranian dudes; & his Moon Knight in a Marvel tabletop - with a few kinks. First, gently caress that "Khonshu" bullshit, he just serves as the Avatar of Vengeance for DEATH. Second, instead of a Staff for melee combat, he chose to bring a "Bokken", or a wooden katana. Third, every time he turns around to go to a fight, he has to find a way to pack a Tec-9, "just in case". Last session, in order to force the hand of a person he believed to be the new Punisher, he assaulted a SWAT team near a High School as students were letting out for the day. I don't drink heavily enough.
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Jun 9, 2015 05:13
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HebrewMagic posted:There's a regular player in my group who, for some very complex reasons, is more or less a permanent fixture despite his questionable nature. Can you detail them? I understand if it's too personal, but this guy sounds...fascinating.
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Jun 9, 2015 05:24
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This year at Origins Con was another year of Indie Games on Demand. I had two games on offer: the Colonial Marines hack of Torchbearer, and a couple of space stages of my own invention for the Fate World of Adventure Save Game. Con theme was "space", you see, so I came prepared. Thursday, morning slot I run the Colonial Marines game for some other Games on Demand GMs. It's a scenario about The Company crashing a training ground asteroid-ship into a deep-space research station and loosing synthetic soldiers and synthetic aliens to track down whoever's been using it to spy on corporate communications. It turns into basically the platonic ideal of Aliens, as the marines clear space for their civilian adjunct to MacGyver the poo poo out of the situation (including disabling a synthetic's remote-wipe functions once I told them a Disarm could do that) and shut down the asteroid ship's mother computer, ARES. Thursday, afternoon slot I play in a game of Swords Without Master. We get a selection of Weird Tales covers to make rogues from and I decide to see what I can do with this guy. Litharge comes to mind, and thus is born Iksar the Ancient, of the Cerement People, for so many things in this world need to be buried. Aside from the first, every roll I make comes up Glum, which y'know is only fitting. I end up burying the last victim of a reincarnating evil right out of his aggregate body, and as the other rogues become the bound guardian of an ancient forest and the trees that once filled it, the last rogue, who took a prop bag of money for an icon, has a nice Just As Planned moment. And then sticks me with the bill for the drinks. Oh well, all these dead mind-controlled knights don't really need their coinpurses anymore anyway. Thursday, evening slot I get into a five-player game of Dungeon World and make a little halfling fighter with a spiked ball in a sling as her weapon. I don't get much of a chance to fight but I do bounce off the other party members pretty well. Sometimes literally, like when I body-check the bard away from mind control. At least from my perspective, five players spread the GM a little thin. Keep that in mind for later. Friday, morning slot, I get three people interested in Save Game and we do some character gen together, ending up with Dr. Pharaoh, a boss character from his game who was only playable in the optional duel mode and had a terrible translation, a motorcyclist Simon Belmont character whose sprite was of a piece with his motorcycle so he can't leave it, and Buzz and Shelly, a cyborg boy and his robot dinosaur from a licensed cash-in game for Kazap Cola. Collect the Cans(tm)! Dr. Pharaoh takes Hax +2 and Palette Swap and Unused Code, so boss fights are a lot of fun. Let me run down the scenario. Back in video game days, Grandfather Soul and his Groove Pirates tried to turn the entire galaxy into their own personal dance party, but were stopped at every turn by a noble space-fighter code-named Star Hawk, heir to an ancient civilization and their surprisingly spaceworthy robot battlesuit. In later games he saved and was joined by Miss Trick, a dinosaur shaman from a primitive planet who quickly came to understand and loathe the powers of funk. But, you know, the Glitch came for Star Hawk, way out in space, and over time he stole Grandfather Soul's Funknosphere and used it to beam power down to a factory built from his home planet, which is spitting jack-filled asteroids down onto Tendoria, where "looking up" animations are in short supply. The game is a two-stage affair, with Miss Trick or Grandfather Soul as the boss of the first stage, depending on player choice, and Star Hawk the boss of the second. This first group is the only one that will get to the second stage, and like all the groups they opt not to fight Grandfather Soul but instead reclaim the Funknosphere from Miss Trick, who is now glitched out and terminally square... until Unused Code cancels out the aspect that's the source of her Glitch, and the remaining corruption within her is purified by a precious, precious can of Kazap Cola. I lift something from Phil Lewis's still-in-development Wrath of the Autarch here, and give the players lists of obstacles to overcome, with two stress boxes and a random difficulty. My favorite of this session is putting "Incongruous Lava" up on the station and then "Perfectly Congruous Lava" down on the planet in Stage 2. Star Hawk wrecks people up with his alien battlesuit, but Dr. Pharaoh steals his Space Jump ability and then uses Unused Code to turn the suit into a giant poisonous bazooka giant. The players rally Star Hawk and set him up to deliver the final blow. It only seems fitting. Friday afternoon I play in a four-player preview game of Project: Dark with pregen characters. Starlyng, the face of the group, refuses to raid tombs for things like a sensible thief who's worried about attracting attention, so we pull a small job to steal a medicinal tonic from a bar and frame the thugs from a different bar, then stage a robbery to cover up a burglary, slipping in a fake for an outstandingly valuable necklace in the middle of a smash-and-grab job. We were able to mix social stealth with actual stealth and a little bit of brazen action in the right place, so I think that bodes well for the game. Friday night I play a three-player game in somebody's reflavor hack of Apocalypse World, 0xCRUNCH, where "weird" is just "wired" spelled weird. The other two players pick up the Angel and the Operator, so I decide to bring an arsenal to the table as a Gunlugger. And the look options kind of make me think.... I pick the statline with +2 Weird and thus is born Chaplain, who came into possession of a 9-foot suit of crusader-style armor somebody made as a pilot project for a new metal technology. And never leaves it. It's even got a big-rear end sword (knife). When we do Hx I get high numbers from both players and they dump low numbers on each other. As the MC pulls their sordid history out of them I interject "Oh boy, Chaplain's friends know each other!" and now I am basically a demented 8-year-old. Nobody trusts me enough to tell me anything so when a local crime boss presses me to betray the group by offering up information I don't have, I go aggro with the sword and get him to back down. As the plan to infiltrate a war zone to recover data from a lab facility progresses, I sit there marking experience, mostly from reading a sitch or acting under fire since Chaplain's friends don't want Chaplain to use the guns and Chaplain listens to friends. When I hit 5 I remember wanting to play a Savvyhead before thinking erroneously we'd need some weapons all up ins, so I pull the Savvyhead playbook out of the GM's reserve pile while another scene is going on with other characters, and Things Speak is staring right up at me. I take it, mostly because I really want to meet a horrible genetic abomination, seize it by force, and then ask "what's wrong with you, and how can I fix it"? But we come to a big locked blast door with a keypad, and Chaplain's friends realize it's finally Chaplain Time so they say "Chaplain, take care of the door." And then the nine-foot metal monster reaches out with his enormous metal gauntlets... and gently cradles the keypad, and says "Hello! Will you be Chaplain's friend?" The entire table just stares at me, which is about when I realize that nobody saw me gaffle the sheet from the GM's pile and has absolutely no idea what the hell I'm pulling. One quick explanation later and I hit the roll and the keypad shows me the last thing done with it, so I punch in the code and say "thank you" as the doors open. The session moves from there, and we do the job under extreme time pressure and get arbitrary amounts of dosh, mostly in the service of an epilogue. And this is Chaplain's epilogue: when the war dies down and a recovery team from the corp hits the facility, absolutely every electronic device is gone, and there's a microwave satellite beaming stupid amounts of power to an aggressively de-charted island in the South Pacific. Saturday morning is Save Game... with five people. Told you to remember that. So the players come up with: Don Penguioxte and Sanchogator, who operate about as advertised; a vampire ferret prison escapee; Scroll Rocker, who plays a dead knight's last will and testament and rises to stardom; Cat Tut, Cat King of Cat Egypt, who has a crown full of playing cards and must collect cookies for some reason; and Wizzotron, a skateboarding robot wizard with guns who is painfully 90s. 3 hours in we finally get near the end of Stage 1 (favorite element of the stage: I nail a difficulty roll and call the obstacle Ten Tons Of Gold, then honk the next one, so the obstacle is Ten Tons Of Feathers) and I realize the normal boss isn't going to cut it... and so many players mentioned a nemesis as their trouble. A giant knock-down drag-out fight ensues, with three polar bears in a windmill mecha, Warden Cross, the Grave Knight, Djaqi Jackal ("that annoying jackal who's always jacking your cookies"), and leading them all, Safety Officer Craegl. There is ABSOLUTELY NO SKATEBOARDING ALLOWED in the boss room. Cat Tut was kind of the star of the show, using Create an Advantage to pull out playing cards. A 10 of Clubs to give everybody weapons to fight the jack-meteors with, a 4 of Diamonds to make a reflective shield to bounce a target lock back to its original spaceship, a 5 of Spades to dig through the ten tons of gold... and a 5 of hearts to connect them all together in their final obstacle, navigating an impenetrable shroud of darkness. But I hope I gave everybody a fair shake. Saturday afternoon is an emergency session by request, for a bunch of people who really wanted to play Torchbearer. Two interested in Colonial Marines, two who wanted to experience the original game because they bought it but need to see how to run it. We do original fantasy and I run the scenario out of the back of the book, but there's definitely some improv outside the box, like a Carpenter roll to shore up some trapped stairs and a combination of Scout and Criminal to jury-rig an ambush for some guard kobolds. Saturday night I play The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, a two-player game about a serial killer and an obsessed detective facilitated by the writer. It's a little like My Life With Master in that there are a variety of scenes to play and attribute conflicts to resolve, but both the killer and the detective are trying to win. The detective can't make a roll to save his life and my socially maladjusted little rage killer is by virtue of his resultant stats supposed to be operating as some classy mastermind -- so we come to a neat little realization. Since the world changes to reflect the stats of the detective and killer, and is supposed to be kind of a proxy for them... bureaucracy, crime, and corruption are opposing the detective in those scenes where I'm supposed to be destroying evidence or messing with his head. We kind of run overtime since it is the first game and we're exploring the mechanics so I propose a compromise: I give the detective one final scene to Cross the Line and come after me. If he can make it, he'll arrest me. If not, he'll kill me, but because I'll have perfect stats at that point I'll have "won", because the entire city up to the highest levels is just as rotten as me. He doesn't make it. Sunday morning is one last session of Save Game, with four players: a badass space marine in an early first-person shooter... which is Hexen, a pizza delivery boy with a transforming robot truck (and the previous game's mascot, Don Coneyxote, popping up at weird intervals), a character from a company's last desperate game which is full of bugs, who is normally a rat with giant throwing axes but can glitch into various enemy and boss characters, and a character from a licensed monster truck game who's fed up with playing second banana to Bigfoot. There's a little time left after the fight with Miss Trick but not enough for a full stage, so I adapt the diplomacy mechanic from Wrath of the Autarch and turn it into a shootout with Star Hawk and his lieutenants (Lightning Hare, Spotless Frog, and Frozen Wolf) and their giant glitch armada, in which there's a giant number of ships but a flagship exploding will take down certain numbers of them. All in all I think I had a good con. If any of my players are on this board and want to enthuse or vent, feel free. Feedback only makes me stronger.
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Jun 9, 2015 05:53
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Never thought the first gaming story I'd hear two sides of would be about fuckin' Cat Tut.
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Jun 9, 2015 06:01
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Night10194 posted:In a setting where magic and enchantment are based on dreams and embodied ideas and memories, I had a player enchant his .357 revolver with the idea of the Video Game Magnum, turning it into an armor piercing one-handed sniper rifle. Did ammo suddenly become bizarrely scarce for it too? Because that would be incredible. 'Well yes sir we carry .357 right...um...huh...we...seem to have run out somehow?' HebrewMagic posted:For a refresher: Gangly white metalhead conservative christian brony (generally accepted to be deep in the closet) Even I'll admit I don't understand how this is so common. HebrewMagic posted:a half-shark boy who is essentially Raiden from MGS, but with more accidental homosexual overtones. This poo poo is loving gold, though, and actually got a guffaw from me trying to wrap my head around it. This guy must be in so deep he strolled past Narnia and is out in loving space by now.
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Jun 9, 2015 06:03
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Shady Amish Terror posted:Did ammo suddenly become bizarrely scarce for it too? Because that would be incredible. 'Well yes sir we carry .357 right...um...huh...we...seem to have run out somehow?' You have given me a fantastic idea.
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Jun 9, 2015 06:04
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Golden Bee posted:Never thought the first gaming story I'd hear two sides of would be about fuckin' Cat Tut. drat, small world. Hope it was an entertaining other side, at least.
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Jun 9, 2015 06:41
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